Page 25 of The Intimacy of Finding You

I grabbed the doorstop on my way out and made a stop at my locker. My legs were still jelly by the time I got the door cracked open, but the cold air on my face somewhat brought me back to reality.

Placing the cigarette between my lips, I cupped a shield around the lighter as I pressed on the wheel over and over again. It was far too windy and far too cold to be a smoker. It took five tries, but I finally got a flame, and that first inhale… The best one, in my opinion. I leaned my head back, closing my eyes as I let the nicotine poison me from the inside out. I wondered if Tobi was still doing okay in this cold, windy weather.

The snow had started to melt a little, thankfully. The alleyway we had sat together in wasn’t completely covered in it—just a few spots dotted along the ground. We’d be expecting more snow soon, though. Did he have a place to stay warm? Maybe I should text Jack and see if he’ll keep an eye out for him, make sure he’d still let him stay in the bar if he wanted to.

I groaned before inhaling again. Jack. I needed to call him and let him know what’d happened. Maybe he’d have some insight. Though I wasn’t sure just how much his insight would help me in this situation.

When had everything gone wrong? When had I dropped the ball and failed Tobi? I knew he’d gotten distant. I knew he’d gotten quieter. I’d tried, I thought. I’d tried to ask him what was wrong, but he never answered me. He pretended like everything was okay, I thought.

What signs had I missed? Ignorance hadn’t been bliss; it’d been agony. Ignorance in the way I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out the why, and I assumed he’d come to me when he was finally ready. I never thought he’d leave.

The day I’d woken up and realized Tobi had left was one of the worst days of my entire life. I’d rather go through all the years I’d been forgotten by my parents in the house I was supposed to call home before Papa took me in than relive that day a single time. I think my heart had broken that day, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever fully gotten it back.

I watched the smoke rise to the sky as I flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stomped on it, mashing it onto the pavement. I just needed to make it through the day. And I hoped Tobi made it through the cold so I could prove to him I wouldn’t fail him again.

chapter fourteen

Ten Years Ago

The sun was shining so brightly even behind my closed eyelids. I squeezed them shut tighter, trying to postpone the day from starting quicker than I was ready for it to. It was something dumb I did in some effort to give myself more time with the night, even though that wasn’t how that worked at all in the slightest.

My alarm was still blaring, which was a bit weird since Tobi would usually have shut it off by now. Maybe he was trying to prolong the night, too. I reached out blindly, trying to find my phone. It should’ve been somewhere on the mattress close by, but it was probably hiding under the blankets again. Instead of doing the easy thing and opening my eyes, I reached further across to try and nudge Tobi awake instead. He had an easier time waking up in the mornings than I did.

But all I felt were cold sheets. No matter how far my arm went, no matter how wide I spread my fingers, all I touched were cold sheets and the bundle of blankets I’d somehow wrapped around myself in my sleep.

Admitting defeat, I finally opened my eyes, wincing and blinking as the light started off as too much, too quickly. As the world got less blurry, I realized the bed was completely empty aside from me. Tobi wasn’t there like usual.

That was odd.

Since the day he’d moved in with me a year ago, I’d always woken up to him facing me, his eyes wide open with a soft smile on his face. Maybe he just had to pee really bad, and I didn’t notice him getting out of bed.

I closed my eyes again, shoving my face into my pillow before finally sitting up and finding my phone. The floor was cold against my feet as I walked through the apartment, forcing a chill up my spine. “Babe?” I called out down the hallway. No answer.

The bathroom door was open, so he definitely wasn’t in there, either. The kitchen looked the same as we’d left it last night, too. I scratched my head, wondering where he could’ve gone. Had he told me he was going somewhere this morning, and I’d just forgotten?

I picked up my phone and called him, waiting through each ring with bated breath. It went to voicemail.

Unsurprisingly, my heart started to beat faster, and the back of my head started to pound as I realized I had no idea where my boyfriend was. He hadn’t been acting the same recently, either, but I couldn’t get him to open up about what was going on.

I sent him a text asking where he was and tried to think about all the possibilities. We both had to work today, so maybe he’d just gone in early and forgot to tell me. Maybe he was working with Price on something and couldn’t answer his phone. Yeah. It’s fine. Everything was fine.

So I went back into our bedroom and opened our drawers to pick out my work clothes, fully intent on getting ready and rushing to Fire and Ice as early as I could so I could calm the impending silent disco in my head. I stood there, staring into the drawer as I realized something. We’d divided each drawer in half. One side was his clothes, and the other was mine.

His side was empty. All of his undershirts and T-shirts were gone. I immediately turned on my heel, going to our closet and opening it in a rush. My chef jackets were hung neatly on one side. Empty hangers mocked me on the other. They shifted with the force of me opening the door so quickly, swinging side to side, hypnotizing me in a frozen state. I stared at them, hoping and wishing Tobi’s jackets and pants would materialize out of nowhere. But that was all it was—a wish. A hope. They didn’t magically come back.

Tobi was gone, and so were his clothes.

A harsh, pained breath escaped me from deep in my gut as I hunched forward and placed a hand over my heart. It was aching. It was pacing. It was too fast and too loud in my head, and breathing was far too difficult. It felt like I was trying to gasp through a straw. Not enough air. Not enough. I couldn’t fucking breathe. Where was he? Why were his clothes gone?

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t fucking handle this. All I could think of were the worst-case scenarios. Was he hurt? Had he died, and I somehow didn’t know it, and someone had taken all of his belongings while I was sleeping?

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” I squeezed the sides of my head, tugging at the hair there until it was painful enough to reel me back in a tiny bit. Of fucking course, he wasn’t dead. None of that thought made any fucking sense, though anxiety rarely made sense. I knew that. I understood it wasn’t logical. But I couldn’t help but feel like a goddamn idiot every time I realized just how dumb it all was.

Should I check the news just to make sure, though? To make sure I wasn’t right? Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Would Tobi just leave me like that? No. No, no, he wouldn’t just… Tobi wouldn’t just leave.

I grabbed a white undershirt and rushed to put it on before snatching my chef jacket and work pants off the hangers in front of me. My jacket wasn’t even fully buttoned, and I hadn’t brushed my hair by the time I was running out of my apartment and into my car.

I couldn’t think of anything logical to counteract the stupid, racing, anxious thoughts running through my mind over and over. He was dead. He was hurt. He was sick and tired of me as a human and had decided he was done with my shit, so he left while I was sleeping.